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When we reach the last chapter in the life of a bird many per- 

 plexing questions arise. One of these is, what* becomes of the large 

 numbers of birds that must of necessity die from old age or other 

 natural causes 1 Is it, as has been suggested, that on the approach of 

 death they instinctively hide themselves from view, and thus concealed 

 await their doom, or is it that they are at once removed from sight by 

 nature's industrious scavengers, the insects and other animals 1 What- 

 ever be the reason, the fact remains that comparatively few dead birds 

 are found whose deaths cannot be traced to violence or accident. In 

 the latter class of cases the inventions of man play an important part. 

 Lighthouses, railways, and telegraph wires all contribute their 

 quota to the large number of accidontal deaths in the bird woi'ld. 

 Many instances are reported of birds meeting their deaths 

 by flying against moving railway trains, and last summer a 

 black-billed Cuckoo was brought m« which had been found dead upon 

 the cowcatcher of the locomotive, on the arrival of the evening express 

 from Montreal on the Canada Atlantic Eailway. This bird was 

 brought me by a bright-eyed and observant boy, who sometimes accom- 

 panies me on my tramps, evincing much intelligent interest in bird 

 life. He tells me that last summer, while on an excursion train on the 

 same railway, he saw a Crow fly against a wire fence, and. becoming 

 entangled with one of the barbs, it hung there, struggling and fluttering 

 as long as he could see it from the window of the moving train. 

 Another curious instance was that of a Sparrow Hawk brought me last 

 fall, which had been found in one of the flues of the' boiler at Lans- 

 downe Park, just before the Exhibition there last fall. The boiler had 

 not been opened since the year before, and the poor creature had 

 evidently, at some intexwening time, flown down the smokestack, and, 

 being unable to fly up again, had starved to death. What little flesh 

 remained on its bones was completely dried up, and the plumage, 

 except for a slight abrasion on the head, was in perfect condition, its 

 colour, however, being slightly darkened with soot. I congratulated 

 myself on having a ready-preserved specimen, but although it had been 

 very dead when I got it, in less than forty-eight hours it was very 

 much alive, and I speedily lost my faith in that method of embalming? 

 and with it my specimen. 



